Over the last twenty years, the use of a global network of interconnected computers, commonly referred to as the “Internet” or the “World Wide Web, has increased at a tremendous rate. One particularly useful aspect of the Internet is the ability to send and retrieve information to and from third parties via web pages or electronic mail (“e-mail”). Millions of Internet users rely on this aspect of the network on a daily basis to send and receive critical business information as well as news, advertising and other information.
As user familiarity with web browser technology increases, such browsers are becoming the preferred graphical user interfaces (“GUI”) for accessing remote information stores, and/or computer programs over the Internet. Information accessed this way is displayed in the form of web pages, each page generally representing a point of access.
Presentation of web pages using a web browser may be problematical in certain circumstances. For example, the traditional GUI may be cumbersome when there is a need to see information from many web pages at the same time. Another example of circumstances under which a traditional GUI presentation is cumbersome is when there is a need to have command and control of many remote applications at the same time. The presentation approach is an issue, at least in part, because a typical web page occupies a substantial portion of the space on a computer monitor screen, and it is not possible to make many web pages completely visible on a computer monitor at the same time.
One traditional solution to this presentation problem involves manually flipping through multiple web pages on a computer screen. This solution is inefficient, tedious and confusing for the user.
Another solution to this presentation problem is to have a computer programmer create a special program designed specifically to combine the relevant web pages. In order to create a composite view of a new set of web pages, new computer code is created by such programmers. Since an end-user has little control over this process, this effectively constitutes an “information publication” where the publisher of the information controls what is being seen in the resulting composite page. Consequently, such a solution is expensive, slow, and not easily repeatable. Further, such a solution has the additional disadvantage that the end user is not able to control or alter the resulting composited web page or the compositing process.